


Reclamation

by Dain



Category: X-Men (Comicverse), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Original 5 X-Men, Past Child Abuse, Road Trips, Silver Age, Trans Character, Trans Male Character, Trans Scott Summers, Transitioning, just bc of one or two references to Scott's backstory, this is an AU where Scott comes out as trans/starts transitioning once the X-Men have already formed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-30
Updated: 2018-10-30
Packaged: 2019-08-09 21:26:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16457510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dain/pseuds/Dain
Summary: reclamation · noun1.The act of reclaiming or the state of being reclaimed.2.The recovery of a wasteland, or of flooded land so it can be cultivated.The X-Men have a few days off, and Scott takes things one at a time.





	Reclamation

**Author's Note:**

> There's a few references to transphobia and a few trans-related uncomfortable situations in this fic but nothing overt, and that's not the focus of the story. I've been having a lot of transition anxiety lately and the only way I know how to deal with stuff like that is through writing, so.

When they leave, Scott has his name and some of Warren’s clothes and not much else.

It still feels electric when he hears someone say it, when one of his friends looks over at him and calls him by his name. He’s held his name so close to his chest for so long that it’s dug in and started to fester, but now that he’s loosened his grip some of the poison has started to drain away. His name may be tender, but better tender than bleeding.

They start driving up the coast on a warm spring day. They take one of the convertibles so they can leave the top down, the wind trying to tug Scott’s hair out of its tie. Warren’s driving, Scott next to him in the passenger’s seat, and Jean, Hank, and Bobby are squashed into the back seat together. Warren drives fast and careless and Scott watches the ocean and thinks about home.

They stop for the night in a small town off the highway. Scott knows exactly where they are geographically but wouldn’t be able to name the town with a gun to his head.

Warren starts undressing the second the door to their hotel room closes behind them, stretching his wings out to their full length as the harness falls to the ground. The rest of them take little notice; they’re used to seeing Warren in various states of undress.

Scott knows he should follow suit and change, get out of his binder after a long day and layer up as needed, but instead he perches on one of the two queen beds they have for the night and listens to Jean go on at length about Joan Baez.

It feels safe, Scott thinks. It feels normal, right there in that hotel room, for him to be Scott Summers and not someone else.

“Move over, Scott,” Bobby says, pushing his way into the circle on the bed, and Scott moves over because he doesn’t know how to put words to what he’s feeling.

Hank and Bobby migrate to the other bed at some point before they all fall asleep. Scott remembers to take his binder off before succumbing, and leaving the bathroom in just his pajamas is one of the most terrifying things he’s ever done but everyone’s too tired to pay attention to him as he slips under the covers and Warren’s wing.

If he can survive this week he thinks he can survive anything else life might throw at him. Right now, his chances feel pretty good.

Blackout curtains mean the sun doesn’t wake Scott up, but habit means he’s the first one awake anyway. He stays under the blankets, listening to Jean snore on the other side of Warren, until he’s awake enough to remember that he wants to get dressed before anyone else gets up.

He closes the bathroom door and pulls his binder on and pauses to look at his face in the mirror. The bathroom light is harsh and he’s still in his sleep goggles, and all in all it’s not a pretty picture. It’s exhausting, looking at himself. He’s not sure which is worse: his face or the scars that curl out from under his binder, where he’s been marked by the crash and Jack and – well, he’s learned not to think too hard about the other ones if he doesn’t want a headache.

He’s not sure how long he spends staring numbly into the mirror, but then Bobby’s hammering on the door saying he needs to pee and that’s enough to draw Scott out of his stupor. He throws on the rest of the borrowed outfit and leaves, letting Bobby push past him to get inside.

“Want to go for breakfast?” Jean asks once they’re all settled, and as little as Scott wants to brave the public eye right now, there’s something about being surrounded by friends that makes him nod along with the rest of them.

It’s a strange feeling, being in public as Scott, even if it’s only surface-level. He’s so used to only ever being Cyclops in public – and occasionally as another name – but he’s never really had the chance to be Scott. No one in the breakfast room at the hotel pays much attention to the five of them (though Hank does get a few odd looks), but Scott can’t help the jolt of anxiety any time one of them calls him by name.

(He isn’t going to ask them to stop, though.)

They pile back into the car once they get their stuff packed up again after breakfast. Scott’s not sure how they managed to spread out so much across the room in just one night, but he can’t say he’s surprised, either. There’s no goal to their journey; the Professor had suggested they get out of the mansion for a few days to clear their heads after everything that had happened in the past month and they’d taken the chance. Three days out and three days back, time to spend doing anything but worrying about training.

Scott suspects the Professor had other reasons for suggesting the trip, reasons that go beyond taking a break from training, but it feels self-centered to dwell on that too much. He’s grateful for it either way; he needs this time with his teammates to see that they still know who he is when he’s out of costume, that they still care, that they’re not leaving him behind or denying him this.

Seating arrangements change, this time with Hank driving and Jean riding shotgun. When Bobby complains about still being left in the back, Hank suggests he try not being the youngest member of the group, and Bobby pretends to pout.

It’s like nothing’s changed at all, and maybe that shouldn’t feel strange, but Scott’s life has been overturned so thoroughly that he expects to see it mirrored in the world around him.

A couple of hours into the drive, Warren pokes Scott and says, “My stuff’s kinda baggy on you.”

“Yeah?” Scott says, nonplussed. He knows that, but he’s not sure why Warren’s bringing it up.

“Yeah,” Warren says. “We should go shopping.”

Scott clams up. He can’t help it. The thought of walking into a store, looking at men’s clothes, trying them on – and there would be strangers around, and – 

Then again, the thought of walking out with clothes that are actually his…

Without turning around Jean says, “We won’t let anyone bother you. If you want to try.”

“I…yeah,” Scott says. He thinks that no world-threatening entity he’s ever encountered has required nearly as much bravery as the past few weeks have. “Let’s try.”

Shopping is, indeed, terrifying, but true to Jean’s word, no one bothers him. The group doesn’t spread out very much, and it might feel personal if Scott didn’t know how ingrained this instinct is in all of them: don’t split up the team, never go far, always be ready in case one of your teammates needs help. 

The cashier looks over his purchases and asks if he wants a gift receipt. He manages to force out a stammered negative, but that’s the worst the experience offers him before they’re back in the car, safe and sound and on the road. Scott’s not actually wearing any of his new clothing and doesn’t much fancy changing in a public bathroom – or going into a public bathroom at all, for that matter – but he’s content to wait until they find a hotel that evening. He’s hyper-aware of the bag in his lap, though, and he’s torn between guilt and thankfulness that the Professor had agreed to cover the costs of their little expedition.

Scott gets changed when they get to the latest hotel, even though he’ll probably only be awake for a couple more hours. Bobby snorts when he leaves the bathroom and for a second Scott’s chest contracts, but then Bobby says, “You look like a square,” and Scott can tell it’s not really an insult.

“It suits you,” Hank says.

“I like it, too,” Scott says, smoothing down the lines of the sweater vest, and that’s the extent of commentary on his fashion sense that night.

They wake up the next morning to overcast skies and a chill in the air. Scott has to borrow one of Warren’s jackets because he neglected to pick up anything for colder weather, but underneath everything he’s wearing is his own. The concept of ownership had been a new one for him in practice when he’d first come to the Institute, but it’s never felt quite like this – he thinks affirming might be the right word for it. It’s not just about ownership, it’s also about him, Scott Summers, being a person, and that’s a good feeling.

“We should stop somewhere and walk around,” Jean says. “We’re doing a lot of driving and not a lot of looking at things.”

Warren, who’s driving again, says, “Sure, but we should find somewhere with an actual downtown. A downtown with more than three buildings.”

The downtown they end up in definitely has more than three buildings, but Scott has a feeling that Warren meant something more like a city than a quaint little coastal town. Warren doesn’t say anything, though, so it’s probably fine. Scott’s honestly not even sure which state they’re in, but the town doesn’t remind him of Sage at all, and that’s enough to make him happy.

Hank and Bobby peel off almost immediately to look for “something interesting,” and knowing what he knows about their thoughts on interesting Scott is more than happy to start heading in the opposite direction with Jean and Warren. He’s not looking for anything in particular, content to follow along behind the other two and listen to their conversation, when an unbidden thought almost makes him stop walking in the middle of the sidewalk.

He may not stop but he does say, “Huh,” out loud without meaning to, and of course Jean hears him, craning her neck around to look at him.

“Huh?” she repeats. He’s not sure if it’s the telepathy or something else that lets her walk forward confidently without looking, but either way it’s distracting.

“Nothing,” he says automatically before rethinking. It’s amazing what a few days alone with friends will let him do. “Actually – do you think we could find a barbershop around here anywhere?”

“We can find one,” Warren says. “I mean, there has to be one somewhere.”

“Yeah,” Jean agrees. “No one goes out of town to get their hair cut.”

“I have,” Warren says under his breath. If Jean hears him she shows no sign of it.

Nearly an hour later the three of them are standing around outside a barbershop, Scott feeling like he’s had about ten pounds taken off of his head. He hadn’t had a plan when he’d jumped into this, and once they’d managed to convince the hairdresser that as a paying customer he deserved whatever haircut he asked for, he’d realized that he didn’t actually know what he wanted his hair to look like other than short. Short haircuts were a lot more complicated than just hacking off a few extra inches, a fact which Scott had not been fully prepared for.

And so it was lucky that Warren was there, as he seemed to have all the requisite knowledge about how to design a haircut that looked good and was able to advise the hairdresser when Scott had no clue. Scott knows that eventually he’ll have to figure this out for himself, but for now – it looks good. An oily veneer of discomfort is still clinging to his skin when he leaves the building – or maybe that’s just hair – but it fades when Bobby punches him in the shoulder and says that Scott should’ve asked him for hair ideas, he has some really good ones. Scott laughs and hits him back. (Very gently.)

When Scott looks at himself in the mirror in the hotel bathroom that evening, there’s something different, something more than just the haircut, and it takes him a full ten minutes to put words to that feeling. He feels like he owns himself.

That’s a revolutionary feeling for him, after the orphanage and Jack and Cyclops. He’s not sure if he can ever remember feeling like this before and he’s not sure if it’ll last once he returns to his day-to-day life, but he knows if he’s feeling like this at all then he must be doing something right.

They’re going to turn around at some point tomorrow so they can make it back to the mansion before their week is up, and Scott’s surprised to find that he’s not worried about that deadline. He leaves the bathroom to join the others, where Jean is talking about finding a public beach if it’s sunny the next day, and for once in his life Scott finds that he’s not worried about what the morning will bring.

**Author's Note:**

> Shopping while trans is scary but also it gives you the opportunity to make realizations about yourself like "oh shit, I'm a dweeb," and that's beautiful.
> 
> Anyway, I have [an X-Men sideblog](https://ndscottsummers.tumblr.com/) now, feel free to come say hi!


End file.
